DigiSTEM 2.0

In June 2018, the Government of Ekiti State through the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology partner with STEMRES and Northumbria University, Newcastle to organize a 3 days training and workshop for public school Science teachers focused on STEM Education and Digital Literacy.

The workshop part of the training was divided into four major sessions:

Teaching the 21st –Century Student

The workshop exposed teachers to how they can teach the 21st-century student, how students should be building communication skills that will reflect the media-rich world they are surrounded with. They are also made to understand the four Cs of a 21st-century learner which is Communication, Critical-Thinking, Collaboration, and Creativity.

Igniting Creativity and Engagement in your classroom

In the second workshop, we discussed ensuring learning is brimming with creativity both physically and through the classroom activities, when learning in an environment that encourages, thoughts and idea communicated to the student will no longer be abstract but interesting and real.

Managing your STEM classroom

Managing STEM in your classroom is another interesting workshop that takes the teachers through the ideas of managing their STEM classroom, how to start with the STEM Class, how to create clear learning objectives, a better start to lessons, teaching the students’ lessons activities that matched a well-defined outcome.

Doing STEM in groups

The last workshop discusses extensively on how STEM can be done in a group, the teachers learn about the strategies for grouping (The whole class, circus, think, pair, share, and jigsaw group). Also how to give roles within a group (recorder, measurer, timekeeper, Runner, researcher, and checker) Students should be allowed to learn from each other in a practical way.

In-between the sessions of workshops were sessions where STEM activities were carried out by the teachers. The activities were:

Civil Engineering- Building bridges and Towers

Solar Physicist- Build your own Spectrometer

The Aeronautical Engineer – Launch your rocket

The Mechanical Engineer – Balloon cars.

During each activity, there are some kinds of excitement and interest all written over the teachers which showed their commitment to giving their best on teaching and learning more about STEM.